The Consequences of Language: Language And Institutional AuthorityChapter 11, Page 1
The Consequences of Language
Chapter 11. How Does Language Relate to Institutional Authority?
This chapter introduces a variety of pragmatic approaches and addresses the question of the approach to language and culture from a self-other perspective.1. Shift of focus.
Productionist and Reproductionist Models. Structural linguists are accustomed to understanding at a communicative event from a productionist perspective, beginning with a speaker who uses the grammar to generate or encode a message which is carried by a channel to a listener who then decodes the message, as illustrated in the adjacent figure. Hymes (1972) criticized this perspective because it fails to incorporate other dimensions of the communicative event. Hymes calls for a much broader approach, called The Ethnography of Speaking, which takes in context, [Elaboration on the Ethnography of Speaking. One important category in this regard is the context of the speech event. By context, we mean the background knowledge, a component of culture that speakers draw upon in the construction of their messages.
The one-way nature of this diagram has been criticized as well. Rather than viewing the speaker and listener as different entities in a cause-effect sequence, a discourse-centered approach combines the speaker and listener into one individual and adds another individual to construct an interactive situation as shown in the sidebar. This diagram is quite similar to that drawn by Saussure (see cover) while the previous figure is a common characterization used in American linguistics, going back at least as far as Shannon and Weaver (19xx). In my reading of Saussure, I detect a much more dialectical understanding of language than is generally reported by the secondary sources, even though he did not exploit it in his identification of langue as an object of scientific study. In contrast, the American structuralist tradition (Sapir, Bloomfield, Chomsky) shows no such sensitivity.
As we will explain later, an important byproduct of this process of interaction is the generation and reproduction of structures (language and social institutions) that are used in the process of negotiation. Because of this reproduction, this perspective is often termed “the reproductionist model” of language and communication. In addition, because this perspective focuses on the practical interaction of individuals it is also referred to as a praxis model. This model opens the door for seeing the communication process in a new light. Here the focus is not exclusively on the analysis of structure, but on the way the individual agents interact, what their goals and needs are, what resources they have at their disposal, on their creative ability to adapt these resources to meet these needs...... We will see aspects of this perspective developed in this and in subsequent chapters. In this chapter in particular we will discuss
In addition to juxtaposing two individuals in the communicative event, some authors (e.g., Berger and Luckmann) have added a familiar focus by designating one individual as "self" and the other as "other." This decision to shift the focus was also made to facilitate the description and analysis of discourse, for we are all familiar with the self-versus-other encounter in everyday life. In these encounters, we note that the most common encounter is the I-you interaction, though in some cases, we find a third person who may not directly participate in the discourse, but whose presence often influences what is said.
By emphasizing that different persons are involved in discourse, we bring to light the important point that each individual is a different agent. Each has an agenda that at times will be in conflict with the other. Each will endeavor to achieve her own agenda using the means at her disposal. The term given to this perspective is "agency." Understood in an ideal sense, agency sounds like something that allows us to do whatever we want and to say whatever we wish and is taken by some to mean that we are free to do as we please. But in a practical sense, as we shall see, this agency, while being the source of human creativity and sociocultural change, is under a tremendous amount of control by the social institutions in which we find ourselves. We refer to this control as (social) power.
When adopting a parole-centered, or rather let us say, a discourse-centered approach to language, we shift our attention away from the structure of language, from phonology, lexicon and syntax, to those dimensions which Ricoeur noted were left out. Discourse takes place largely in face-to-face encounters in which someone says something to someone about something. It is important to keep in mind the point from Berger and Luckmann that it is in the face-to-face encounter where things get said and get done.
Dialectics and Nomothetics. The earlier structuralist or productionist model of language shares a number of similarities with the nomothetic view of process embraced by the positivistic sciences, while the praxis model adopts a view common to dialectic perspectives. This nomothetic, or view understands processes as a combination of universal cause–>effect relationships such that when the cause (a spark) is there, the conditions (hydrogen and oxygen) will inevitably lead to an effect (heat and water). While many have viewed the opposition between nomothetic and dialectic relations as an either-or situation, we take the view that they are complementary and that both are need to help us understand the phenomena around us. But we do note that one of the major problems confronting western knowledge is the overeagerness to portray dialectical phenomena as nomothetic, as in the case of a purely structuralist view of language, with the unfortunate loss of insight into the phenomenon studied. We illustrate this problematic by showing in this chapter what benefits arise from a dialectical (praxis or reproductionist) view of communication.
2. The Limitations of Structuralism
2.1. Ricoeur: Structure, Word, Event.
In chapter 2, I mentioned that in some ways the triumph of the structural study of language with its focus on language structure (langue), to the exclusion of language event (parole) could be considered too successful, for it has led us to suppose that the study of language is essentially the study of language structure. In fact, much of the current difficulty in dealing with the question of what is the relationship between language and culture is a direct result of this methodological decision that Ricoeur characterizes as doing "violence" to our linguistic experience.
Ricoeur notes that the methodological decision involves three important components. First, the decision to focus on synchrony to the extent that diachrony is characterized as a sequence of synchronic states isolates the study of language from language change. Structural explanations of language change typically fail to incorporate the role of the active user of language so that language change is characterized as drift, improper learning or internal (rule) simplification.
Second, by emphasizing linguistic value, the meaning gained by signs opposing one another within a closed system, structuralism isolates itself from issues of reference and the connection of linguistic signs from the real world. Saussure did not deny that lexical signs did bear referential meaning. After all, this would be flat-out silly to do so. But Saussure did exclude the study of reference from structural study.
Finally, by choosing to focus on langue to the exclusion of parole, structuralism has isolated itself from issues of communication. All of these methodological decisions need not be understood as wrong, but they can be understood as limiting the focus of language study to a subset of linguistic phenomena and excluding a number of important domains of language.
While the term "violence" may be a rather dramatic way of characterizing the limitations of structuralism, Ricoeur used this term to describe the shock that ordinary users of language, as opposed to linguists, experience when confronted with a characterization of language that excludes topics like communication, reference and change. Another way to see the effect of a structural approach to language is to examine the way `language and culture´ sections are traditionally treated in introductory anthropology textbooks. Such sections (see for example Kottak 1975) usually begin with a statement to the effect that language plays a crucial role in culture. However, following such a statement the chapter goes on to describe structural linguistics, usually including a statement on the units of linguistic structure: phoneme, morpheme and syntax followed by a description of the work of structural linguists including the work of the most prominent structural linguist of the day, Noam Chomsky. While, this essay is not intended to belittle the contribution of structural linguistics, it is clear that work in this area cannot hope to answer the question of how language is related to culture. Many "enlightened" introductions will also go on to discuss sociolinguistics and the Whorfian hypothesis, but these treatments really provide little additional insights about the relationship as both sociolinguistics and the Whorfian hypothesis are largely based on the structuralist perspective, that is, one that excludes the relevance of language event, the consequences of the act of speaking (parole).
In excluding language event from the study of language we are excluding the act of speech, the event in which someone says something to someone about something" (Ricoeur Structure, Word, Event...). Thus, we are excluding the actors, self and other (s), and what is said.
2.2. Post-Structuralism.
Another serious problem with structuralism is its hegemonic character. As we shall see below in our discussion of power and ideology that the structuralist model, like the positivist model, attempted to institute itself as the only way to look at its subject matter. This had the effect of driving out and dismissing alternative approaches to the analysis of language as inferior ways of understanding. As a result, following the criticisms of Ricoeur and many others, scholars began to seek other approaches which lacking a better term they labeled post-structuralism, a term that implies that the new approach will succeed and replace the narrower structuralism. Yet, the term post structuralism has its own faults. First, it tells us what it isn’t and not what it is and secondly it does not tell us in what aspect it differs from the structuralist model. For example, some post-structuralist approaches, like Ricoeur and Berger and Luckmann accept the langue-parole opposition, but propose, in opposition to structuralism, to include parole as a crucial component in the analysis of language and communication. Others, however, like Giddens and Fairclough (see chapters xx), object to the concept of parole, as formulated by Saussure, saying that it does not provide a realistic picture of how language is constituted..
For this reason, we recommend that when talking about a post-structural approach, one say the post-structuralism of Ricoeur or Fairclough to avoid the impression that post-structuralism is a unified approach to the study of language and communication. However, it is still true that all post-structuralist approaches to share the sense that language and communication is other than just structure. In this regard, we also note that several approaches, like G.H. Mead’s symbolic interactionism (chapter xx) and Goff man’s approach to the self and to face predate the period of the reaction to structuralism, yet nevertheless they are in their essence post-structural as well.
3. Post-Modernism I. At about the same time that the shortcomings of a purely structuralist approach were coming to light, a similar disenchantment with positivism arose as well. The concept of positivism can be traced to the enlightenment (17xx-18-xx), also known as the modern era, and the belief that people, through the use of reason, could decide political issues intelligently and in so doing produce societies that true operated in the best interest of its citizens. It was during this period that the truly remarkable advances of science offered promise of providing this rational thinking that the methodology of the scientific approach began to be taken so seriously that it began to crowd out other ways of knowing and understanding our world. The name given to this approach was positivism, which held that true (positive) knowledge existed in the universe and that it could be obtained (only) through empirical observation and the application of the scientific method. Because of the failure to achieve an age of enlightenment and the associated failure of positivism to successfully address all areas of inquiry, especially social phenomenon, confidence in the enlightenment of the modern area waned, as scholars sought new avenues of investigation termed post-modern. As was the case with post-structural pursuits, post-modern approaches need to be identified with respect to the way that they differ from the modern, as there is no single line of investigation that can be called post-modern.
The two major criticisms of positivism include its attempted hegemony, its desire to exclude other types of knowing, and its embrace of nomothetic laws, to the exclusion of dialectics, as the basis for explanation. Because these criticisms of positivism parallel those of structuralism, some writers use the two terms interchangeably with the effect of confounding these two quite distinct lines of development.
4. Post-Modernism II. The term post-modernism is also used in a quite distinct sense, namely that of a new era of social relationships. Whereas the modern, ending roughly at the end of World War II, was characterized by durable social identities (class, ethnic, gender) and a sizable industrial base, the post-modern era involves much more fluid and negotiable identities and a more service oriented economy. Although these two types of post-modernism are based on two different conceptualizations of modernism, their criticism of the past and a call for a new methodology to confront the future were quite similar, and consequently these two types of post-modernism were also confounded.
3. Practice.
Both post-structural and post-modern approaches emphasize the importance of a praxis orientation to the analysis of human issues. The praxis-based approach to understanding can be traced back at least to the works of Karl Marx, who stressed that all human production, including social institutions derived from human activity. It is this emphasis on human interaction that forms the basis of praxis-oriented approaches.
3.1. Mead's Symbolic Interaction
Although George Herbert Mead published most of his work in the 1930s his work, known as symbolic interactionism, clarifies the significance of praxis-oriented approaches to human society by introducing what he called the symbol (and what we have been calling the sign) as the key to humans, as opposed to all other animals, interacting with each other.
Natural Signs. Mead points out that man is not alone in being able to interpret its environment. Infrahumans have the capacity to bestow meaning on objects (or for that matter activities) in the natural environment. For the sake of the discussion, let us term this activity "interpretation." The ability to identify things and events in the world which signify "danger´, "safety", "food", "the opportunity to procreate" is, after all, a matter of survival. Interpretation at this level, according to Mead, represents the imaginary completion of the activity of the object. Thus a predator would be seen as devouring the subject, potential food items would be seen as eaten and so forth.
Now, if the world of the organism is such that the same object produces the same interpretation, what I call "signification" can follow. By signification, I mean the fixed association of a meaning (value) and a (natural) object resulting in a (natural) sign. Signification avoids the necessity of interpreting de novo the meanings of naturally occurring objects. I contrast the terms "natural sign" and "true sign" to emphasize the difference in the tokens (signifiers) of the two types. In a true sign, the token is manufactured by the user, whereas in a natural sign, the token occurs in nature. None-the-less, this capacity to bestow fixed values on objects and events in the natural world represents an incipient stage of signing. As signs, we can view the naturally occurring object as a signifier and the meaning assigned to it as the signified.
As Mead pointed out, the capacity for signification, the assignment of a fixed value to an object comes from the organism, on the basis of what that object means to the organism. This raises the question of whether in the case of natural signs, the relationship between the signifier and signified is arbitrary (non-necessary) as is the case of "true" signs. The arbitrariness in the relationship can be seen from the fact that the object is defined at least in part by the (species of) organism as opposed to solely by the object. A fox could be defined, depending on the species, as a predator, a food source, or a potential for reproduction. Yet, from the perspective of any given species, the range of possible values assignable to an object is extremely narrow, especially as long as the range of meanings is limited to issues of survival.